Yoga Q&A

Questions submitted by readers. Feel free to submit your question in the comments or via our Contact page. 

Q: I want to start doing yoga to help heal my body. What's the best way to start? 

Yoga is an amazing healing tool, for sure. Just keep in mind that it is a *journey* to healing, so seriously, the most important thing you will learn to do is honor *your* body and *your* journey. If you don't feel the strength to do a move this month or this week or this day, then honor that and trust that your body is strengthening along the way.

Just holding down dog for however many breaths you can hold it will strengthen your arms, shoulders, and core and increase your flexibility. And it's perfectly okay to be at that place in your journey.

When you're ready, try lifting your leg straight back about hip height (3 limbed dog) to build into firehydrant, or you can do firehydrant from table if you want to focus on strengthening and opening the hip/ leg. Both are good options for building to the pose.

My best advice would be that a tape or a studio practice is a partnership--you decide what's best for your practice that day. All the poses the teacher offers are possibilities, not mandates. You should feel free to modify whatever you need to modify to protect the integrity of your body and health.

I'm happy to help if I can! Most poses can be broken down into build-up poses, so if you're not seeing the options for modifying a pose, let me know, and I'll see if I can help out.